December 8, 2006. Copyright 2006, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Hollywood powerhouse Steven Spielberg turns 60
By Jo Griffin

LONDON, December 8, Graphic News:  Where would movies be without Steven Spielberg? Many are unthinkable without the groundbreaking special effects of blockbusters including Jaws, E.T. or Jurassic Park. And perhaps only someone of his stature could have done celluloid as well as box office justice to weighty subjects such as slavery (Amistad), or the Holocaust (SchindlerÕs List).

On the eve of his 60th birthday on December 18, Spielberg has fingers in many pies, including the eagerly awaited Indiana Jones IV,  a biopic on Abraham Lincoln, and his space travel movie Interstellar -- to mention but a few. No sign yet then that the worldÕs most commercially successful filmmaker is growing tired of Òdreaming for a livingÓ.

Spielberg has been making movies since he charged friends to watch his teenage efforts shot on 8mm film. Born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he had a peripatetic childhood before settling with his father in California following his parentsÕ divorce. By then he had shown his first feature film, Firelight, at a local cinema in Pheonix, Arizona. 

He was turned down three times to study film at UCLA and the University of Southern CaliforniaÕs School of Cinematic Arts, but eventually attended Long Beach State University where an internship at Universal Studios landed him a directing contract. Duel, an early feature made for TV, revealed his promise but it was in only his second feature for the big screen, the 1975 tale about a killer shark that terrorises a New England community, that he was catapulted to stardom.

Jaws won three Oscars (best sound, original score and editing) and took $100 million at the box office. Thirty years on, the film still terrifies thanks to its Spielberg trademarks of primeval fear and terror of the unknown. These emotions have characterized many of the directorÕs most famous films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the energetic Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T., the Extra Terrestrial (1982).

While E.T. was a box office hit for years, critics say it reflects a tendency to let sentiment override artistic merit. Similarly, Hook (1991), his film about an adult Peter Pan, was said to show the directorÕs own refusal to grow up. By then, however, Spielberg had proved he could handle serious material with The Color Purple (1985), nominated for 11 Oscars. And he rarely went wrong with adventure movies such as Jurassic Park, released in 1993.

That the same year he also released the vastly different SchindlerÕs List, about a man who risks his life to save others from the Holocaust, reflects the extent of his talent. The movie finally netted him an Oscar for Best Director, and is considered an accurate depiction of the events it portrays. Similarly, his 1998 second world war drama Saving Private Ryan won critical acclaim, as well as a Best Director Oscar, for its unsparing portrayal of war.

Recent projects to emerge from his DreamWorks Studio include several forays into a sci-fi future, including Minority Report and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Munich, his 2005 film about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Atypically, this film does not end on an optimistic note -- which may hint at an interesting direction for Spielberg in the future.

The director is married to actor Kate Capshaw, with whom he has three biological and two adopted children, plus a stepdaughter. He also has a son by his first wife, Amy Irving. The lifelong democrat has received numerous honours for his work on the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation since 1994.
/ENDS